


Smaller Miracles

by universe_c



Series: Fifth Iteration [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Awkwardness, Emotional Manipulation, It's Caliborn, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, and Kurloz, horrible awkwardness, mental manipulation, psychic stuff, soooo yeah
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2013-07-21
Packaged: 2017-12-13 12:35:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/824372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/universe_c/pseuds/universe_c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is it. The Angel died at the hands of his servant. The universe burned and Paradise arose from the ashes.</p><p>It is as prophesied.</p><p>You were right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, please join me on the Good Ship Skull & Boners. I have an unholy love for this ship because it is in every way terrible. Allow me to illustrate this for you now.
> 
> Thanks much to [quietserval](http://quietserval.tumblr.com/) for the timely beta!

The new world is drenched in color when you wake, the sky lit with fiery clouds and cool moons, the land a riot of multihued leaves. For some time you are able to do little more than stand, swaying on limbs that feel ill-fitting and feet unaccustomed to bearing real weight. You stand and you look and look, filling up your think pan with the motherfucking miracle beauty of the place. You are truly breathing for the first time in unmeasurable aeons, your chest rising and falling in a way you're far too aware of. The world smells like sea-salt and alien growing things. You make no effort to escape the sunrise and when the light hits your new skin, you shine like special stardust. 

This is it. The Angel died at the hands of his servant. The universe burned and Paradise arose from the ashes.

It is as prophesied.

You were right. 

You become aware of the stranger all at once, as if he appeared out of thin air. One moment you are alone, all your plots and missions and secrets purged by the dawn breeze. The next moment, there is someone standing with you, close enough to touch and radiating a barrage of _feelings_ that leaves your thinkpan ringing.

He is a head shorter than you, not counting his wickedly pointed horns, and he is not a troll. Not quite. But neither are you anymore, judging by your squishy skin and all the fine, glittering hairs on it. He is lean and tense, and there is something both hungry and defensive about his carriage, about the way his mismatched eyes roam over you. He wears leather, rough gold ear studs and a tattoo of stylized gears. His feelings get louder and more tangled the longer you look him over, until a terrible ache starts to build behind your eyes. 

You are a Destroyer of Rage. This is not what you are accustomed to. Even puppeteering a mind or breaking it outright did not _affect_ you the way that this person's mere presence does. The things he's thinking about don't bear closer examination, lest your new inner ear go as deaf as Meulin's. 

Perhaps that would be a relief.

He opens his mouth as if to say something, closes it. Opens it. You watch him flounder.

A shout filters through the woods around you, your name. Some of the forest sounds, you realize abruptly, are laughter, excited shrieks and cries. Voices you recognize. You hear footsteps crunching on dry leaves.

“Fuck,” the stranger says, and vanishes.

And thus ends your first meeting.

The voice calling you is your Mage. You reach for her, to learn what she knows. You cannot touch her mind until she is quite close, much closer than you seem to remember. But it has been so long since you had a physical body – perhaps it is merely the difference between a dream bubble and reality. 

You reach into her mind, and for just a moment she welcomes you. Her love is swelling and harmonious. But there is something inside her that wasn't there before. You breach the barrier roughly, unthinkingly.

You can hear the moment her mind goes discordant with horror, with fear. Her loyalty wavers, fractures, and shifts out of your key. 

Her smile falls. Her lips form words, but you're unsure if she spoke them aloud. 

She says, “All this time.”

And then she runs from you. You watch her go.

It is quite a long time before anyone else comes looking for you.

^^^^^

Your paradise proves full of non-believers, of motherfucking blasphemers smug with their false sense of victory. But there is some holy mystery here as well. You recognize the Angel's other half immediately. And by her presence, you discern that the stranger who looked so like her might be your Lord. If he was not some dream or vision, his visitation is a portent of the most visceral kind. But this world was born of his defeat and you are unsure what his presence here would mean. You have no prophecy to guide you now, and little choice but to bide your time.

You work willingly, carrying load after load down the cliffs, sewing rough tents and gathering fruit. Their fear of you pounds behind your temples like sirens wailing, like blades beating on shields. The few former humans who try to reach out to you, who ask your help with chores or attempt to include you in meetings, fear what you will do if left alone more than they fear your presence. 

Even your Ninja, he who was lucky enough to attend your Lord most closely, fears and hates and blames you in equal measure. You know that he struck out at the Angel in the end, as he was supposed to. What you cannot forgive is his intention. He wavered only when it was too late to matter, and in the end performed all his duties in spite of himself. It would be an excellent joke, if he had not betrayed the Mirthful Messiahs in his heart. The way he snivels and sucks up to the non-believers sickens you, but you suppose that is the nature of a Bard: two-faced.

Your only ally here is thus the Timewitch. She was never good at following orders, and only seems interested in plotting against the Heiress and circling the Angel's other half like a carrion bird. No matter, you have always worked best alone.

You discarded self-doubt when you placed yourself in the Messiahs' service. Everything you have done and everything you believe is proven correct by the very existence of this Paradise, by your collective presence here. By your Lords' hand were they brought to this place, the Angel and Messiahs they hate and fear were their deliverance. Only by his whim, his oversight did any of them escape double-death.

You were _right._

Perhaps he will return, to smite them all again.

^^^^^

You were, in life, accustomed to fasts, both physical and emotional. It was faith that sustained you when you first sewed your mouth shut. You were too important to die before your time. The rules of the Game were different then, set by your Lord for his own advantage.

Here, you must relearn your boundaries, and you are not best pleased by what you find. Hunger begins to affect you far too soon, in a matter of mere days. Fatigue wears you down and leaves you feeling shaken and foggy. It affects you more than it should, to only glimpse Meulin as she hurries away, to have the others' fear and hate whining constantly in the back of your mind. You bend that uncontrolled empathy to your will, but it is an uphill battle through the murk in your pan. A bitter seed of disappointment takes root in your pumpbiscut. Much of it is for yourself. 

You slip away at mealtimes, into the quiet woods or up the cliffs. There is a prominence from which you can look down over the rainbow trees toward the green sea, but remain concealed from both the Door-site and the gaze of the village. You're cold despite the pleasant sun, your long sleeves and the warmth of the dry needles which form a cushion under you. You feel that if you sit here long enough you will simply fade into the cliff-face, your bones embedded in the rock, white-on-white. 

More realistically, you will simply grow too weak to stand, and then die. Perhaps it would be better that way.

You do not startle at the stranger's appearance, announced as he is with a strange, subliminal thrum and a burst of impatience. He appears standing over you, his white hair haloed by the sun, hands spread wide in an awkwardly grandiose gesture. 

Will he prove to be your Lord true or a pretender? You weigh the benefits of standing, the moment of vulnerable dizziness against your height advantage and readiness. You elect to remain seated, hoping the stranger will take it as a show of strength. Your voodoos, warped as they are, are at your command.

“My first. My most loyal. My favorite follower,” he says, and the feeling that hammers behind each word says simply 'MINE.' 

You lift an eyebrow at him. He squints at you, then reaches down and hauls you roughly to your feet. He is tangible, then. Real. 

“You fucking moron,” he mutters, and gently touches your tight-stitched lips. 

You steel yourself against the onslaught of tenderness/disgust/need/uncertainty that cascades from his fingers. Your doubt, your disappointment unfurls. There is too much human about him, as there is too much human about your own self now.

WHO ARE YOU?

You make the thought a blade, a barb that will hook into his mind and catch there. He's got you backed against the rock, standing in your personal space, casually _touching_ you as if he has every right to do so. He grins lopsidedly, his chaos of feelings rumbling like a purr. 

“I am the Angel who delivered you to Paradise,” he says. His thinkpan squirms with pride and embarrassment at this proclamation. “My name is Caliborn, but you always call me 'My Lord.'”

A cold fury fills you. He dares to speak the Angel's secret name so freely?

Motherfucking unacceptable.

You invade his mind, and you are not gentle. Not at all. His defenses are nil, his self unfolding around you in a maelstrom of emotions, desires, memories. You wear Rage like armor, and only Rage keeps your own mind from dissolving away into his.

He shivers against you, swaying forward until his forehead brushes your chest, his horn perilously close to your throat. You wrench him open further, seeking to incapacitate. He clutches at your shirt.

“This is why you're my favorite,” he murmurs. “So ruthless. Even with me.”

You shove him away before his upwelling of affection/pleasure/self-loathing can do more than register.

He both is and is not the Angel. He carries your Lord's memories, including a few of you in your former state. He holds a vast power to manipulate Time, and uses it with little real thought for the consequences. But he is rotten inside with red feelings, fears and hopes that have no bearing on destruction. He is younger and older and _other_ than he was.

You push all that you gleaned about your future self aside. It should not matter here.

He holds a hand out to you. His serious face is ruined by a trace of a smile.

“Come with me,” he says, “And I'll fucking show you. Everything.”

^^^^^

When he moves through time, his mind stills, thins, becomes one with the pulse of his powers. In the sudden quiet, under the oscillating lights of the sky, you feel small.

He helps you down the rocks, seemingly just because he wants to keep touching you. His feelings for you are too contradictory to decipher with logic. But the longer you are exposed to him, the easier his chaos is to pick through, the easier it becomes to bear.

The building he leads you to is small, built of rough white stone, with a doorway you have to duck your horns through. Inside it is a single, sparse room, with a few rough benches and a tall sideboard. The bare stone floor is a pool of multicolored light, projected by the south-facing windows.

A triptych in colored glass portrays several figures. Two are unfamiliar, but the largest, central figure has your horns, your eyes, wears your color for a mantle, bordered in red and green. Your face is the serene mask you've cultivated all your life and unlife, but more somehow - remote and powerful, ready to dispense wrath or miracles without warning. You hold a large orb of some kind cradled in both arms, a heavy book in a stand at your elbow. Above, the image of your companion stares down at the viewer with burning, mismatched eyes and mantled wings. You notice the way his fingers are clenched on your shoulders, each joint and claw a separate dark-bordered shape. At your feet three children cluster, faces hidden in your robes. 

“Do you understand?” Caliborn asks you. His impatience, his formless neediness presses against your mind.

NO.

You want to hear him explain it. You want to watch the way he shoves the sprawling babble of his mind into words.

He paces a couple of steps, his soft leather shoes scuffing loudly in the bare room. 

“You,” he says, flapping his hand between yourself and the window, “Are my- are the beginning. My true cult, my- help. In the future. All of it starts with you.”

He steps close again, staring up at you with something close to the knee-weakening power his other self's gaze held. 

“I need you,” he says, his face coloring faintly. “To teach them. I need you _alive.”_

All the ways he needs you twist and coil just under the surface of his mind, like eels in a clear pool. Memories of you in the future clamor in the gap between you. Part of you wants to block those unsettling thoughts out. But his secrets are both treasure and ammunition, promise and punishment. He is offering you power, he thinks - power over the future and though he does not know it, over himself. 

To be needed, still, is a much greater relief than you'd thought.

You bow your head, and you call him

MY LORD.

“Kurloz,” he breaths, “Come here.” 

He pulls your face down toward his by the scruff of your neck. You can hear him wondering how your stitched-tight mouth would feel against his. Different, he thinks, than your mouth feels normally. You push the thought aside. Later, you will go over and over this encounter in your mind. Later, you will have many things to consider and to plan. For now, you close your eyes, unwilling to witness such vulnerability on the Angel's face.

He absently cups your jaw as he plucks at your stitches. He pulls one until his fingers aren't touching your flesh at all, and it parts as if rotted through.

“What the fuck were you thinking, dumbass?” he mumbles, and sets about tenderly pulling the thread from the long-healed holes in your flesh. In the distance, you think you can hear voices, though it could just be birds, or the wind. Inside the tiny church, the moment seems suspended, secret, still. Indigo, red and green fall from the windows onto his hair and horns, his shoulder, his clumsy hands.

He is more your creature than you are his, you think.

Probably best if he never notices.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This. Is the most awkward thing. And I am not even a little bit sorry.

You have to lay at an angle across the floor of the tent so as not to touch the sides anywhere. It is the best of the tents you sewed yourself, back when you first arrived, but it is untreated canvas and this rain has been falling steadily for nights. Touching the walls anywhere will mean getting wet, instead of just damp. Your damp bedroll and your damp clothing are getting musty. So long as you are still, it is tolerable. You have cultivated stillness until it is comes more naturally than sound or motion.

You feel him approaching first, the angry buzz of his mind encroaching on your meditation. The Lord's presence is immediately recognizable, though you have only encountered him twice before. You reflect yet again how porous your mind is here, how receptive. It is a holy mystery and also a test, how you can hear/feel his mind from so much further than anyone else's, how you cannot block him out. You take this moment to ready yourself for your time with him. You have been planning as you sat vigil here, in his holy place. You have been imagining dialogs, futures, contingencies. The wait has been longer than you'd anticipated.

His footsteps squish and thrash in the wet undergrowth. He swears under his breath at the sky, the trees, the darkness. Then he says, “Fucking finally,” and you feel a burst of relief as sweet and sharp as biting into underripe fruit after a long night's labor. 

You do not move until he says your name, close outside the tent wall. Only then do you sit up to undo the ties of the tent flap. Your back is stiff and you have to duck your horns awkwardly in the low space. He half trips over the canvas threshold, going to one knee and immediately starting to drip a puddle on the already damp floor.

“I am fucking soaked,” he complains. “Fuck this weather. Fuck this whole fucking season. I'm the Lord of Time and I shouldn't have to deal with this horseshit ever.”

He wipes water from his face and starts picking at the ties of his clothing. You help him struggle out of his sopping overshirt and muddy shoes. You place them outside the tent flap and tie it shut again. They will not dry in here, only make everything wetter. 

He flops back into the bed roll then glares up at you, looking you over. His lips are pale, his eyes bloodshot an alien pink. His clothes are different from when you last saw him, the materials like nothing the village currently has. His pants are going to leave a wet spot in your bedroll that may not go away for weeks.

THOSE ARE THE DRIEST BLANKETS I HAVE, MY LORD. BUT THEY WILL NOT BE DRY LONG IF YOU DO NOT REMOVE YOUR OTHER GARMENTS.

“Fuck, sorry,” he says, rolling off the blankets and right into the tent side, which sticks wetly to his shoulder. You seat yourself cross-legged and avert your eyes. His flustered frustration crowds the air as he digs through his bag and mutters to himself. “Ugh. If I had the energy to find you in some other time, I would have nothing to do with this fucking rain. Fuck. This. Oh my fucking god all this shit is wet! This fucking bag was supposed to be waterproof. I should go find that merchant and stab him repeatedly. Fucking ripoff. Shit, stupid laces.”

You do not watch him change, though you can feel each time he glances at you to check whether you're looking. He does not seem to know whether he wants you to look or not, each glance punctuated by both approval and disappointment. You spread his wet pants and socks in the space not taken up by your bedroll and bag. 

“I am fucking exhausted,” he says, throwing himself back down. He rubs at his face, then peeks at you from behind his fist. One of the gears inked on his forearm is darker and sharper than the other, its lines still faintly raised. His uncertainty rattles like poorly-packed wagon.

YOU HAVE BEEN TRAVELING?

“Of course I've been fucking traveling. What the fuck else would I be doing, if I'm not here? No wars this time. Nothing worth my damn time, just a lot of fucking boring politics. So I came back.”

To you inner ear 'back' sounds like 'home' and 'to you.' Intellectually, you understand that you must somehow win his trust in the future. It is just this side of unsettling to have it now, unearned. These days you are far more used to being distrusted intensely and for good reason. 

He fidgets, wavering between embarrassment and anticipation. Then he plucks a stoppered clay jar from his bag and thrusts it at you. 

“I brought you some of these fucking things you like. I don't know why the fuck you love them so much, I think they're fucking loathsome, and you can't even taste them, can you? Fuck, that's probably the whole fucking reason you like them. Have you been fucking eating? You still look skinny as fuck.”

You pull the stopper from the jar. It is packed full of small green spheres in clear liquid. Their savory, alien smell makes your mouth water. 

THANK YOU MY LORD. WHAT ARE THEY?

“Some kind of pickled fruit or something, I don't fucking know. Do I look like Crocker to you? Are you going to fucking try one or not?”

You fish one out and put it between your far back teeth, where the stub of your tongue can still reach. Complex, salty-sour flavor bursts all over your soft palate when you bite down. It is sublime. You have to chew very carefully now, but this is not an experience to be rushed.

THIS WAS NOT NECESSARY. BUT THANK YOU, MY LORD.

“Shut up,” he says. “I'll bring you whatever the fuck I want and you'll fucking like it. Besides, it's not like I was. I just fucking saw them, okay? So don't get used to this shit or anything, you're supposed to be the one serving me.”

You incline your head, pretending not to notice his blush. He watches you eat a second one. You stopper the bottle and set it aside, that strange flavor lingering in your mouth. Based on your last encounter, the look he gives you should not be so surprising: fond, comfortable, smug at having pleased you but trying to hide it. And yet, in all of your planning and speculating you did not seriously consider him capable of such a kindness. 

You are bound to him for good or ill, the time for choosing left behind in another life. You wonder how you will come to bind him to yourself so thoroughly. And more to the point, why? The utility of having the Lord red for you seems obvious but your choice of that path is not.

“Lay the fuck down,” he says, wiggling onto one side of the bedroll. “You're making my neck ache, sitting all bent over like that.”

You loom over him briefly as you change position, careful not to touch him anywhere. He looks up at you, and his swell of want is instantly buried in so many layers of annoyance and denial that you're not sure he's fully aware of it. He frowns to himself, shifting so he's curled on his side. Stretched beside him in the small space, you can see that his eyes are drooping. He informed you last time that you should have food, water, and a place to rest ready for him when he comes to you. 

ARE YOU IN NEED OF ANYTHING ELSE, MY LORD?

“I managed to fucking feed myself for once, if that's what you're asking,” he mumbles. “I'm going to sleep.”

But he does not sleep. He shuts his eyes and lays stil. His thoughts whine in circles, pinging between comfort and anxiety, desire and trepidation. Grey light is starting to gather outside, the illumination making you feel tired yourself. But his mind is buzzing loud enough to keep you both awake indefinitely.

ARE YOU SURE THERE IS NOTHING ELSE, MY LORD?

He cracks his eyes open, and his look is so nakedly needy you nearly let your surprise show on your face.

“I. Can't sleep,” he says, yearning for something formless and nameless. Something he wants from you.

Is it acceptable for the Lord to want so violently, if it is a desire you can fulfill? You abandoned your own wants long ago, and took those of your Messiahs on like a mantle. Desire binds more tightly than mere faith, because it is born of self-interest.

The Lord shifts, his outflung hand brushing up against your shoulder. Touching him brings his thoughts into startling, close contact, like objects seen in your peripheral vision sliding into focus. His mind opens to you eagerly and his anxiety seems to drain away on its own, gratitude/fondness welling in its place. 

It was you who left him primed this way, sometime in the future. Your trace is thick on his mental landscape, unknitting the connection between his messy emotions and his reasoning, reinforcing his more appropriate convictions. You must be cautious, so as not to accidentally undo any of your own work. A thorough examination seems called for, but the contradictory press of his thoughts is distracting, to say the least.

It is easy enough to smooth the jagged edges of his mind, plucking his exhaustion forward until it begins to shut down everything else. But you are unused to the sheer volume of feedback you get from him. You are dimly aware of your own body's heaviness and the next moment you are tumbling down with him, into unconsciousness.

You dream of a vast city, or he does. It is almost the great port-capital of Beforus, remembered from countless vids, news clips and official dispatches. Starships sweep low over the myriad white sails on the bay. Clouds of insectoid personal transports flash overhead. The streets teem. He smiles in the dream, leading you by the hand through crowds which part before him as if he were royal or diseased. He draws you past the great Tent of the Messiahs, the black-walled military academy, districts of mansions and smoking wreckage. In an awning-draped marketplace you argue philosophy over bowls of dust. He insists something about the nature of the present, but the words he uses make no sense. You realize one end of the market opens on a gray and devastated plain, but suddenly he is much too close, his flesh too warm even for a rust blood. He presses fingers to your lips, their stitches burst and you wake, startled.

In sleep your Lord is so relaxed he looks like a different person. He has shifted closer, one fist curled loosely against his mouth, his forehead pressed into your shoulder. One of your arms is tucked around his back, the way you once, aeons ago, held your matesprit. The thought alarms you very deeply for a moment, and you can feel him stir, your horror bleeding into his unprotected mind. You move automatically to soothe it away, from yourself and from him. He sighs against your collarbone and sinks deeper, out of reach of daymares. 

And that leaves you alone and unsupervised in his mind. Unconscious, the overpowering shout of his emotions cannot camouflage his true self from you. In the Worlds Before, the Angel was the incarnation of terror, destruction and Death beyond Death. Now he loves, he needs, he dreams of running barefoot through the streets like a child. And it is mostly certainly not you who has rendered him so unfit. Looking again through his collection of psychic scars, it is clear that someone else has been here, some other Rage player whose fingerprint you do not know. 

The only possible solution is Gamzee. He has forsworn the righteous faith, but would he motherfucking dare to gentle the Lord's mind, to riddle it with these cracks and weaknesses? Angry now, you pry further, unmindful of the way he stirs against you. If you press and dig just so – yes, there. An image floats up of the interloper's face, and it is not Gamzee, though he looks similar. He is young, spindly, orange eyes under pale hair. He wears the Indigo of Rage. 

Who is he? This planet is supposed to be empty but for yourselves. Certain facts gleaned from the Lord's mind last time seem relevant, but the picture they paint is disturbing. Impossible.

“I don't know if I should tell you about him,” the Lord murmurs, face now wedged against your chest. “I found out too soon and I. Didn't take it well.” 

But you've already confirmed the answer for yourself, the memories flashing across his mind between swells of undissipated sleep. A wiggler yet to be hatched. His child. And your child. 

Impossible. How? You could dig deep enough to find out, easily.

“Can we not? Fuck,” the Lord says. 

You reel your mind in when his begins to push you out. He squirms back, knocking your hand away from where it had settled, cradling his skull. His memories become slippery when he is no longer touching you, images indistinct under the twitchy pulse of his embarrassment/want/shame. You are gratified by the indecision he feels at your withdrawl, but annoyed with yourself. He sensed your intentions, though he was laid open for you willingly, trustingly, _wanting you there_ as Meulin once did.

You must not lose his trust, however unearned it now seems. 

MY LORD, I APOLOGIZE IF I HAVE OVERSTEPPED MYSELF.

He scrubs at his eyes.

“You. I. Look, it already happened. To me. And I don't know if I can undo things I've already done without help. It might. Fuck things up worse.” He meets your eyes. “It doesn't hurt. At least, not. When we. Uh.” 

His memories of the incident are intense yet veiled somehow, a splintered mess of sexuality and confusion. You realize you have reached in after them without thinking, chasing them down toward another, darker memory lodged in their center. You pull back, study the way he's glaring at you. You decide to try honesty.

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW SUCH A MIRACLE MIGHT COME TO PASS. 

His blush darkens again. “I am not going to fucking detail the whole unsavory process. I try not to fucking think about it, ever. Ask one of those life bitches.” 

YOU FOUND IT DISTURBING?

His mind backpedals from just how _not_ disturbing he found it, his reaction to his own reaction stronger than any memory of pleasure. “I find a lot of the fucking horseshit I have to put up with around here disturbing,” he says. “Plus, I didn't even. I didn't know. So. Now you know, even though we broke the rules. Dirk's pointless rules aren't for us, anyway. We make our own rules, and we can break them if I fucking well say we can.”

You meet his eyes, one red and one orange, burning in his dark face. He still looks tired. Before you can ask what the Dirk human has to do with any of this, he reaches up and touches your lower lip, tracing the line of pin-point holes your stitches left you with. His touch is a hammer-blow of possessiveness to your think pan, unsubtle and inescapable. You are his, as the child is his, as all Time is his by holy right.

“Can we go back to sleep now?” he asks.

WHATEVER YOU DESIRE, MY LORD.

He snorts, and you can feel how he wants to tuck himself close to you again. Instead he rolls over and contracts in on himself, mind settling again into a swirl of scurrying noise. It is disturbingly difficult to think your own thoughts while he's awake and touching you. Even laying here, a careful handspan between you, his mind spills intimately over into yours. You have much work to do before you are able to attend him without suffering this inconvenience. Your control is too poor. 

“I can fucking feel you thinking. Quit it with that shit and go to sleep,” he mumbles, his mind pressing on you harder. “You never fucking relax.” 

HOW AM I TO RELAX, MY LORD, KNOWING WHAT YOU HAVE JUST TOLD ME?

“What, knowing that you'll grow old and fucking domesticated and go on to be worshiped for all time? That. Okay, that does sound shitty. Maybe I'll have to take you with me more. But not right now because right now I am. Mother. Fucking. Tired. Hurry up and just do the thing. It worked on both of us before.” 

A faint pain starting to gather at your temples, like the headache brought on from too long in a loud room. You feel you have little choice but to sink fingers into his mind. Like before, it stills, quiets, damps down and relaxes open to you. He sighs, relieved.

Some of your hesitation must leak through because he rolls onto his back to meet your eyes. 

“I fucking told you to didn't I? You and I, our. Goals. Are the same. Right?”

YES, MY LORD.

He smirks a little and leans his face into your hand when you reach for his forehead.

“Besides, it's easier than fucking _talking,”_ he says, and then you push him down into sleep.

If only it could be so easy for you.


	3. Chapter 3

The Timewitch finds you on the morning the rains finally break, one needle dangling carelessly from her fingers. 

“You see him, yes? Lord of Time? Tell me truth you no want me gut you.”

You give her a long and measuring look. She is difficult to predict, her inner music faint and more at odds with her actions than even the Lord's. You can sense no uncertainty behind her question. She already knows.

I HAVE.

Her expression curls into an ugly grin. “I see him too, traveling Time. He run away, but I will find.”

AND WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN YOU FIND HIM?

“See what he worth,” she says.

YOU WOULD MOTHERFUCKING DARE TO MEASURE THE DIVINE?

“Pf. You not? You let him bend you over, pound your nook like mammal if he want? I not so stupid.”

Your fingers curl into fists involuntarily. You take a half step-forward, looming over her and letting a coil of your cold fury brush her mind.

HOLD YOUR TONGUE, WITCH.

She eyes you, then bursts into raucous laughter. This close, you can sense the blade of jealousy lodged under her bloodpusher. It is the only thing that stays you from doing her harm.

“Look you blush!” she says, chortling. “I hope he fuck like wild beast. No one here have good bulge to satisfy me.”

WAS THERE SOMETHING YOU WANTED, OR WAS THIS VISIT MERELY CALCULATED TO PROVOKE?

She sobers so quickly it makes her laughter seem false. “I come to warn. Lord of Time have power big enough to warp all Timeline as he move. He no will be one to suffer, if Time go wrong. It will be whole world, whole universe.” 

You allow yourself to relax minutely, though you stay in her space to better sense her intentions. 

IT IS NOT OURS TO JUDGE OR CONTRADICT HIS DESIRES. IF HE WISHES TO DESTROY PARADISE, IT IS HIS HOLY MOTHERFUCKING RIGHT.

She snorts inelegantly. “His wish, or you? You can tell? Or is he like your little cat? I know what you do to them. Everyone know. They get what they deserve for being weak, yes? But you not find me so weak and easy.” Anymore, her mind whispers. “I not let you do what you want with Lord of Time. Do not cross me you no want bleed.”

She smirks, rolling her needle idly between her fingers. You force your breath all the way down to the bottom of your lungs. You are master of yourself. You are a motherfucking picture of composure and control. 

I AM NOTHING BUT HIS SERVANT. AND YOU ARE LESS THAN THAT. DO NOT GET ABOVE YOURSELF, WITCH, OR THINGS MAY GO WORSE FOR YOU THAN THEY DID IN OUR SESSION.

Her eyes narrow and the opaque shell of her mind flares along its seams with rage. Her killing intent is so palpable you take a step back, readying your body to dodge and your mind to spring. 

But instead she smiles sweetly and says, “Maybe you right. Tear down this world, who would care? They not deserve, you not deserve. What I have lose? This short life, nothing else. You are one with much at stake in this. Let blood flow, let Time shatter, let story go another way. No more paradise, poof! If that what you want, I help. Sound fun! That no what you want, hurry and decide. You not keep him secret forever.”

You throw all of the cold intimidation you can project into your words, like dumping snow on a roaring fire.

YOU WILL NOT TELL ANYONE OF THE ANGEL'S PRESENCE.

She rolls her eyes, head lifted defiantly. “Why I do that? Idiots down in valley, they are blind, cruel, bulges busy in own nook. They would doom us all, so stupid. They are enemy, mine, yours and his. That is thing you and I agree. Why not we be hatefriends in this?”

Only she would have the motherfucking gall to come to you like this, spewing such casual blasphemies and threatening you into cahoots with her. Rejecting her will guarantee her enmity. However, accepting her help will by no means guarantee her cooperation. Though she expressed interest in safeguarding both the Lord and this timeline, you would be unsurprised if she did harm to either in a moment of blind vengeance. Better to keep her close, where she can be watched. Perhaps with proper, careful management, she could prove a valuable tool. 

AN ALLIANCE, THEN?

“How else?” she says. “I make good for you both, yes? With me you have all Time choke on his bulge. Without me, not so much.”

DO NOT MAKE ME REGRET THIS.

“When you ever regret anything? Not once I have seen. Since I am kind, I let you keep him now. When time right, I will come. Then we decide what to do and how.”

And then she turns and walks off, barking another laugh as she goes. The morning breeze shakes the canopy overhead. Water falls with a hard patter all around you, rattling in the underbrush and drumming on the soggy ground. Between one tree and the next, Damara seems to disappear.

^^^^^

The Lord's next entrance into his clearing is like a thousand metal bars dropped into your think pan in a discordant cascade. It takes a moment for your senses to steady.

He looks very small, crumpled against the base of a tree. This version of him is not even fully grown yet, still weedy and unfinished-looking. He is filthy, clothing stained and skin streaked with dirt. His mind is badly unbalanced, his body's demands for water, food and rest dragging his thoughts into an uncontrolled spiral. 

You go to him. He is barely conscious, but he still manages to glare up at you with vague recognition and unconcealed hate. You offer him succor, as is your duty and your motherfucking privilege. His enjoyment of the food you offer him is mechanical, bodily, almost an annoyance to him. There is no fondness in him anywhere, no gratitude, no possessiveness. To this version of him, you truly are a tool, something to use up and discard or destroy as the mood takes him.

Is that not the way it should be? He has the motherfucking right to all of you. You tell him this and are met only with hostility, suspicion. 

His mind is shutting down around him, his stubbornness the only barrier holding back sleep's tide. It takes only a small push to knock him out. You stand over him, smoothing away the last of his misery and the raw beginning of a feeling much like guilt. 

This, then, is your Lord before the softness of Paradise corrupted his dark and mirthless soul. He has no grand purpose, no motivations loftier than unreasoning spite. You can feel no pity for such a creature, a god of wrath and hatred masquerading as a child. Is this not the Master you have shaped yourself to serve? Is this not the motherfucking Angel, the true and only Lord?

Your hands do not shake as you see to his comfort. You ignore the corner of your own mind that is twisted and fraught with indecision. There is no decision to be made here. There is only one path forward, and you are a pilgrim with a motherfucking holy tread.


End file.
